"...The article describes a parent-faculty meeting at The Spence School, a private enclave overlooking Central Park, where several eighth-grade girls had declared themselves "bisexual." The school called in a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Richardson--himself a gay man--to reassure the parents that lesbian experimentation is common, and that it was too soon to know if they would be lesbians or heterosexuals.

At the all-girl Brearly School two weeks earlier, Dr. Richardson told a parent group to advise their daughters as young as nine years old that they, too, may have sex with other girls in the future. "It is a good idea," he said, "to mention that people have sex with members of the same sex sometimes, and that when they grow up they may have friends that do that--and that it may be something that they themselves do."

"A small but growing number of students," the Times article reported, "have come out at these schools, or at least say that bisexuality is stylish." Parents are concerned, and Dr. Richardson--"pedigreed, carefully-spoken, determinedly nonthreatening--has become the schools' gay issues consultant of choice" because he is "sane and clear," according to the Spence headmaster..."